Book Review: Working with Rawlings
The author of this book and I met for the first time many years ago, 56 years, to be precise. I had been dropped by my parents at school to begin my second year in secondary school, when I happened to encounter a tiny boy whose mother was about to leave him after bringing him to form one.
He was reluctant to let his mother leave him; I am not sure whether he was crying, but he must have been close to it. Taking pity on this little boy, I shared my chocolate with him to make him feel at home.
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Book: Working with Rawlings
Author: Prof. Kwamena Ahwoi
Publisher: Digibooks
Reviewed: Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng
Today, Professor Kwamena Ahwoi is a well-known and well-regarded statesman, having held many positions of responsibility in Ghana. He has been the longest-serving Minister of Local Government and Rural Development and is renowned worldwide as an expert in local government and decentralisation.
He has been one of the closest confidantes of former President Jerry John Rawlings and it is in that capacity that he has published a book which is currently stirring controversy in the country.
On my first reading of the review copy, which I read for the review at the launch of the book last Friday, I knew it had a vast potential for trouble. It is that very fact that makes it such a valuable publication.
It answers in part a question many of us have asked over the past four decades — when will Rawlings publish his memoirs? Of course, this is not a book by Rawlings, but it illuminates the Rawlings era like no other book before it.
This is why the publication of this book is an important event. Despite the liveliness of the nearly two decades of Rawlings’ rule, that period remains rather opaque in our history.
Of course, it is a controversial period too; this has given rise to all kinds of theories and rumours about power struggles, personality clashes and policy challenges, in both the PNDC and the Rawlings’ NDC governments.
The author says in the preface that “this is not a book about Jerry John Rawlings, it is not a book about Kwamena Ahwoi, it is not a book about the Provisional National Defence Council, it is not a book about the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
“It is a book about Kwamena Ahwoi working with Jerry John Rawlings; our working relationship; our ups and downs and our joint commitment to building a better Ghana than we found it. Somewhere along the line, we drifted apart. This book is about that too”.
Scope
Despite the scope of the book so succinctly defined, the book is more than what its author purports it to be. There are three important areas in which this book will be seen as an historic opening to an important part of our country’s recent past and its current developments.
The first is the role played by the author himself and some of his closest associates in giving shape to a revolutionary period that began without a roadmap.
Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966 had ushered the country into a period of instability which was not abated even by two short period of civilian rule between 1969 and 1972 and 1979 and 1981 respectively.
From the outside, even to an engaged witness like your reviewer, there appeared to be little administrative order or policy logic in the early days. However, reading this book shows that there was method in the madness, or at least there was an effort to impose order.
This took the form of forming the revolutionary government and creating its institutions. Even in that chaotic moment, more thought appears to have gone into the process than the rumour mills recounted at the time.
Example
Here is an interesting example: Former President John Kufuor was for some eight months a minister in the first PNDC government. He had been the secretary for Local Government and Rural Development.
This was a strange appointment because he was a leading member of the Popular Front Party (PFP), which was the ideological antecedent of the current New Patriotic Party (NPP). Moreover, he had been put in detention by the same PNDC in which he served.
The rumour at the time was that he had been appointed to appease the old establishment. This appointment confused the revolutionary cadres at the time. It turns out that this was part of a well-crafted ploy to get a good deal from Nigeria and the new regime had learnt that Mr Kufuor was a good friend of President Shehu Shagari, who was the president of Nigeria at the time.
On such minute details does the wheel of history turn but without the insider’s recall, such detail would be lost in the mists of time.
Institutions
Of even more interest is how a number of institutions were created to take care of the revolution’s earliest business.
These included the Bureau of National Investigations, Citizens Vetting Committee, National Investigations Committee, public tribunals etc.
These appeared at the time to be disjointed pieces of a jigsaw being assembled out of a box, only we did not know where the box was kept, but we knew that Rawlings had the only key.
It turns out, according to this book, that there was both process and logic to how these institutions were developed, manned and sustained.